Sunday, March 31, 2013

This week’s GOP autopsy report, commissioned by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, is a great start in the much-needed task of rebranding the Republican Party. As the chairman acknowledged, “the way we communicate our principles isn’t resonating widely enough” and “we have to be more inclusive.” The report contains 219 recommendations to “connect people to our principles.” To achieve that goal, the party will need a strategic vision of how voters think about politics, which is something that the report lacks. For that, the GOP can learn a lot from another American passion: baseball.

This year, about 75 million Americans will go to the baseball stadium to watch a ballgame, about the same number as those who will vote in next year’s election. We rarely think about why someone becomes a baseball fan, or why they root for a certain team. Nor do we usually think about why someone chooses to vote for a certain political party. But it’s actually a very useful exercise.

When it comes to baseball, fan loyalty has almost nothing to do with the brain, and almost everything to do with the heart. In all of history, there’s never been a baseball fan who rooted for his team because it had the lowest ticket prices, or because it had the most taxpayer-friendly stadium deal, or because its players did the most community service. For the vast majority of Americans, rooting for a baseball team — not to mention, voting for a political party — isn’t really a rational choice; it’s more of a statement of personal identity — a statement telling the world, “This is who I am.” And for most people, defining “who I am” starts with family and community, before branching out into areas like race, age, gender, and class.

Family is pretty straightforward. If your mom and dad are Yankee fans, you’re almost certainly a Yankee fan. The same is true in politics. If your mom and dad are Republicans, you’re almost certainly a Republican.

Community is also pretty straightforward. If you grew up in, say, Philadelphia, chances are pretty great you’re a Phillies fan. Likewise, someone who grew up in Republican territory like, say, suburban Dallas or rural Indiana is much more likely to become a Republican than a nearly identical person from Seattle or Santa Fe.

Cities with more than one baseball team, like New York or Chicago, show revealing breakdowns by race and gender. The racial split in Chicago between Cubs fans on the North Side and White Sox fans on the South Side is well-documented. In New York, there’s an intriguing gender gap between Mets and Yankee fans, with women gravitating a lot more to the Yanks. While there’s a few theories out there trying to explain that, one obvious answer leaps out: Yankees heartthrob Derek Jeter.

In sports, as in politics, people’s convictions can’t be conveniently reduced to who their parents are or what they look like. But those things are an important foundation, upon which more rational sentiments come into being. Once you’re attached to your team on an emotional level — seeing them as a personal reflection of who you are and what you care about most — a rational exterior comes into being through phrases like “the Red Sox are the best team because they have the most heart” or “the Republicans are the best party because they know how to create jobs.”

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Why do you feel it is necessary? Would you rather concentrate on critical thinking skills, or rote memorization?

An educated person should be able to both. I'd say obviously, but it clearly isn't.

Memorization is a skill. As with any skill, it requires practice. You can certainly go Brian's route, which is to memorize stuff you look up all the time. Everyone does that, even very stupid people. If you do something often enough, it sticks.

But learning at a higher level is greatly facilitated by being able to quickly memorize stuff. If we want to have that deep discussion about the Civil War in which we all show how good we are at critical thought, it helps if we can get through the basic facts faster. If we keep foundering on who was president, or which state was in the Union and which was in the Confederacy - or other points I think you'd agree we need to have solid before critically thinking - we never get to the deep discussion.

I don't advocate bashing any knees (well, most of the time) but if students had better rote memorization skills, they'd be better critical thinkers. And most rote memorization has been driven out of academics on the basis of "teaching someone how to think critically may be more important that just throwing facts at them."

Put it another way: let's think critically about Hamlet. Okay, now let's do it without knowing the alphabet.

Now part of that may be a skewed perspective on my part, I've often said my only real skill is the ability to read both stupidly fast and for a high rate of retention. But if your in college, your lips shouldn't move as you read.

Oddly enough, a former newspaper colleague of mine in Little Rock who went on to become a (somewhat successful, I gather; I think he ended up with Stephens) lawyer did move his lips as he read. Must've been some sort of holdover from childhood, or something, because he was perfectly intelligent.

This doesn't even take into account the social sciences which are becoming vanishingly rare all together in high school.

I was pretty surprised to learn that my high school discontinued the History department a year or two after I graduated.

Though, I'm afraid I'm unable to contribute much to the discussion on high schools as (despite the fact I graduated as recently as ten years ago) I have absolutely no memory of what went on in my high school.

The commonality I found between people who excelled in high school, but struggled in university was that they put way too much pressure on themselves.

What kids appear to be better at, at least than when I was growing up, is social competence. There appear to be far fewer
people that can't find any place to fit in

This must explain the rise of cutting.......

In my wife's experience, social competence (when defined as the ability to empathize with another's point of view, adapt to change and accept responsibility for one's actions) is the skill that has suffered the most. For some context, over half of her last accounting class were not aware that 1/2, 1 divided by 2, 0.5 and 50% were all the same thing.

BTW, just a funny anecdote on how Universities really have become very vocation oriented, I recall when we were learning consanguinity in Decedents Estates in law school. For those who don't know, this is how an estate without a will is decided. The application of this law requires a very basic understanding of fractions. I've always loved math, so this was preposterously simple stuff. My classmates, however, were hopelessly lost. In particular, my professor was trying to show the class how 1/2 of 2/3 = 1/3. Now, arithmetically they could understand it, but they wouldn't buy into the premise. Now part of this was the professors fault, because he glossed over the equivalency of 1/2x and x/2. After some time I explained it to my friends using three pencils, showing them that if I take two thirds of the pencils I have two, and half of those two thirds is one. Seeing my success the professor then used the technique for the entire class.

Let that be a lesson if you ever need a lawyer in LR AR. 1st graders take less time to understand fractions.

From a practical standpoint, almost everything I need to memorize I memorized by having to look it up a bunch of times. Not that you shouldn't memorize anything, but the best way to know what to memorize is to do it organically. Any time I spend memorizing when painting X was painted is wasted time.

I've found that looking things up a bunch of times usually doesn't help me memorize it unless it's a relatively small piece of information. Actually using the information and thinking about it is what helps me memorize.

The example above of students not even being able to order artwork by year even when they have the timeline in front of them is a good example. The assignment should have been for students to create the timeline themselves. I guarantee more of them would remember the information that way.

The commonality I found between people who excelled in high school, but struggled in university was that they put way too much pressure on themselves.

It was in college that I first saw people pull all night cram sessions before tests, obsess over and re-read/rewrite their class notes over and over again, to me this behavior was so obviously counterproductive I honestly had no idea how/why the ones who did it couldn't see for themselves... being a psych major I later decided that this behavior was a variant of OCD (one of the few "diagnoses" I think I actually got right to tell the truth)

One of my sophomore year dorm-mates literally had some type of emotional collapse by the end of the year, he literally progressed this way before exams/tests:

Study non-stop 8-12 hours, until 2-3AM, get up at 6am, "study" non-stop until test at 10:00am

Pull all-nighter, literally study non-stop 24-30 hours prior to test

Pull two all-nighters in a row

Finally he literally collapsed in the middle of an exam, not just head on table, literally slumped over, fell to floor, was taken to campus medical...

The thing was he KNEW his behavior was counterproductive and irrational, he couldn't stop (didn't help that his parents, both of em were complete asshats, more than once I overheard them on the phone berating him for being lazy and stupid, his grades were bad because he wasn't studying hard enough... I once asked if he could give me the phone so I could talk to them- he wouldn't do it)

And most rote memorization has been driven out of academics on the basis of "teaching someone how to think critically may be more important that just throwing facts at them."

I think that most studies show that teaching someone to think critically IS more important than just throwing facts at people.

That's not to say that there aren't people who learn better in a lecture style classroom - I'm one of them. In fact, a lot of us on this board might be. But that doesn't mean we are a majority of students.

I've found that looking things up a bunch of times usually doesn't help me memorize it unless it's a relatively small piece of information. Actually using the information and thinking about it is what helps me memorize.

I was terrible at memorization when I was very young. I can remember learning my multiplication tables by actually working out the answers every time instead of just knowing the answer. In the end, I think it helped with my math because I became extremely proficient in doing mental work quickly (because there was a prize for fastest multiplier), but it wasn't until I started using the memory tricks that I really started memorizing things. By the time I got to law school I had graduated to the method of loci and easily had the best memory of my friends. All this to say everybody has their own thing, which is why memorization is a skill that's so hard to teach.

It was in college that I first saw people pull all night cram sessions before tests, obsess over and re-read/rewrite their class notes over and over again, to me this behavior was so obviously counterproductive I honestly had no idea how/why the ones who did it couldn't see for themselves... being a psych major I later decided that this behavior was a variant of OCD (one of the few "diagnoses" I think I actually got right to tell the truth)

The obsessive re-reading and re-writing thing is interesting. I know a ton of people who did that. Now part of that is because that's how your taught to do law school, you read the chapter and take notes, then you take notes during class, then you summarize the class after you leave, then you synthesize all three sets of notes into one outline, then you edit the outline down to a workable size, then you obsess over it. For whatever reason, some people thought if that much was good, then more must be better. For what its worth I never did any of that. I paid attention to lectures and read the material, but the act of writing just for the sake of writing never appealed to me. I've often thought law school ingrained mental health problems, now I have a little bit of evidence.

In university (5-year program) I had one 200-page notebook that didn't come close to being half full. I listened intently and engaged in classes that warranted it, and I didn't bother going to the one's for which there was no incentive to go (i.e. the prof just reiterated what was in the text book). I didn't make the dean's list or anything, but I graduated on time.

Okay, guys, the fact that you have trouble memorizing stuff is evidence that it isn't taught or practiced. It's been going on awhile. Used to be, though, you could take any mediocre or worse student and they'd be able to recite, years after leaving school, minutes of Kipling or Shakespeare.

Does it have a practical purpose? Yes, learing to memorize stuff. No, knowing who painted what when or the 9th verse of a poem few have heard of may not have much direct impact on your adult life (though it is probably a more empty life if that is true) but having the requisite skill to memorize such things will.

I think that most studies show that teaching someone to think critically IS more important than just throwing facts at people.

Jesus H. Christ on a jumped up blue horse, no one is saying it isn't. What they're (we're/I) are saying is that simply because being able to think critically is more important than having good memorization skills doesn't mean that having good memorization skills is unimportant. Apply your critical thinking (and reading) skills to what folks here are saying: important skills are being left out of the curriculum or not emphasized enough. Education isn't about picking the most important aspect and only doing that, it is about a whole host of things and is very complicated. Any pet theory that drives out, completely, any important aspect will doom it to failure.

Lassus makes a very interesting point about music and memory. I learned piano late in life (perhaps I should say "started learning," because that was 15+ years ago and I'm still a beginner). I cannot memorize pieces – I can read and play from music, I certainly play better after I've played a piece several times – but I am not much of a musician, because I don't internalize the music very well.

Frameworks for memory are very interesting. I laugh at myself for not knowing contemporary baseball players, but I rarely forget one after I've seen him, unless he's one of those g#####n middle-relief clones they use six of in every game now. And clearly it's because I have way too many brain cells devoted to a virtual baseball encyclopedia with lots of empty area I've prepared for future storage.

Lassus makes a very interesting point about music and memory. I learned piano late in life (perhaps I should say "started learning," because that was 15+ years ago and I'm still a beginner). I cannot memorize pieces – I can read and play from music, I certainly play better after I've played a piece several times – but I am not much of a musician, because I don't internalize the music very well.

I played from a young age and I am quite terrible at memorizing pieces. Which is weird because my memory is quite good otherwise. When I sit at the keyboard, I lose all the notes that I can memorize quite well everywhere else.

When I look around the internet, the first thing I think is totally "Man, I'm glad all these 18-year-olds were given such highly honed critical thinking skills rather than memorizing stuff."

QFT.

I actually heard this on a CBC radio call-in show about education. They had some VP of Curriculum or some big wig like that from the provincial Dept. of Education as their guest. A listener called in and decried that lack of spelling ability of the students, and this was the big wig's justification (I'm summarizing):

"So, Billy wants to be an author but he isn't a very good speller. We would just tell Billy not to worry about it, because if he's an author he's going to have an editor, and its the editor's job to catch the spelling mistakes."

I was stunned. But that's the kind of pure inexcusable bullshit that passes for education.

My oldest siblings are 12-to-18 years older than me. We all went through the same public schools (elementary, junior high, and high school) in our hometown (Santa Clara, CA), but I went in the mid-to-late 60s/70s and they went in the 40s/50s/early 60s.

They all were taught to recite various things from memory (poems, sonnets, grammatical rules, table of the elements, etc.). I never was.

But damn if I can't put them all to shame in things like reciting the lineup of the 1954 Cubs.

Okay, guys, the fact that you have trouble memorizing stuff is evidence that it isn't taught or practiced. It's been going on awhile. Used to be, though, you could take any mediocre or worse student and they'd be able to recite, years after leaving school, minutes of Kipling or Shakespeare.

This is not a thing that I believe. I went to a Baptist school where we were tested on our ability to memorize Bible verses. Don't remember any of that today. The practice of memorizing things isn't what is important. You have to occasionally recall those things or our brain won't prioritize the paths that access those memories. The people that could quote you your minutes of Shakespeare were likely able to do so because they routinely recited those minutes of Shakespeare, not because they were forced to regurgitate them for a test when they were in high school.

How does a class curriculum get at that exactly? You can't follow the students around until they're 40.

important skills are being left out of the curriculum or not emphasized enough.

You seem to be arguing that rote memorization is being 'left out' of the curriculum. I'm pretty sure that isn't the case. With so much emphasis on standardized testing, I'd wager that rote memorization is still the most emphasized skill in K-12 education.

I've played the piano most of my life (I started with classical and jazz; was in the jazz band in high school) but haven't read music since college (where I minored in music). I've got perfect pitch and can pretty much play anything that I've heard before on the first try. So if someone says "Play Sweet Caroline" (or whatever) I can belt it out even if I've never played it before.

This is a neat skill to have as it simply blows some people away at parties when they see me do it. In the last few weeks I've started to get serious about writing music and then recording it to see if anyone's interested; we'll see if it goes anywhere.

Lassus, if I'm playing in a band I'll keep time by following the bass -- not the drums. When I'm playing by myself I'm told I keep time with my teeth, by subtlely moving them -- I didn't realize I was doing this until someone pointed it out years ago; not sure if I still do it now.

Lassus, if I'm playing in a band I'll keep time by following the bass -- not the drums. When I'm playing by myself I'm told I keep time with my teeth, by subtlely moving them -- I didn't realize I was doing this until someone pointed it out years ago; not sure if I still do it now.

Oh, my rant about foot-tapping doesn't really apply to rock bands. Everything is too loud and everyone should be following the drums anyhow. But it barely matters drums or bass either way, just make sure the bass has good tempo. In an classical ensemble it is factually impossible to either a.) tap at the exact same rate as the conductor or b.) tap at the exact same rate that people in the ensemble are keeping time silently. And this problem becomes quickly exponential if there is more than one person doing so, because none of them will be tapping at the same time. And it's just not part of the score.

I should certainly learn how to read music, given that I'm very musical, and I don't think it would be difficult for me, but its just low on my to do list right now. I don't have anything against the skill, although it probably came off like I did.

To be clear, no one, and I mean no musician on the planet whines more than a singer in any rehearsal with perfect pitch. They mostly (not entirely) treat it like a curse. I don't care. I'd rather have than not have.

To be clear, no one, and I mean no musician on the planet whines more than a singer in any rehearsal with perfect pitch. They mostly (not entirely) treat it like a curse. I don't care. I'd rather have than not have.

Disagree. The guitar player with terrible tone who does everything else well is much worse. He'll play something complicated, it'll sound like crap, and then he blames the $1,000 strat.

Watch for the foreign policy instincts of President Obama’s first term to fully flower in his second. He always inclined toward diplomacy, but rarely to the point of taking personal political risks. Now in his second term and far less vulnerable to conservative charges of “wimping out,” he’ll put himself more on the line for negotiations and compromise, and will not be chancing steps that could slip into wars. And while he called most of the shots in his first four years, now his decisions will go virtually unchallenged. His team is replete with loyalists in the White House, and senior cabinet officers who lack the clout of their predecessors.

Gone are centrist/conservative Bob Gates at Defense, Hillary Clinton at State, Leon Panetta at the C.I.A. and later at Defense, and General David Petraeus as chief Afghan general and then C.I.A. boss. Newly arrived are moderate anti-hawks like John Kerry at State and Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon. Obama loyalists are now even more deeply entrenched: Denis McDonough, closest to the president after Valerie Jarrett, has moved from No. 2 on the NSC staff to White House chief of staff. Tom Donilon, the key political strategist on foreign affairs, is now freer to follow his liberal proclivities.

... the new bosses at State, Defense, and the C.I.A. have far less political clout than their predecessors. Gates, Panetta, Petraeus, and Clinton were political powerhouses in Congress and with the media. Mr. Obama had to pay attention to them, whether he liked it or not—and even give in at times, as with their support of higher U.S. troop levels than he desired in Afghanistan. To be sure, Kerry is respected on the Hill because of his long and careful tenure on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but Hagel has little backing in either party after his very weak confirmation hearings. Brennan will never approach the movie-star status of Petraeus or the personal congressional links of Panetta.

This is not good. It’s never good when a president doesn’t have to pay close attention to what his advisers say. Given all presidents have to do, it’s just too easy for them to make mistakes. This is especially the case with Mr. Obama and national security policy, where, though his background is not the strongest, he remains quite confident about his judgments. ... Many outsiders complain that they’ve had less access to senior officials in the Obama administration than any administration in decades. And outside experts say that when they do get a chance, the exchanges are not free and easy. Mr. Obama and his team owe it to themselves to test their thinking this way. And if they engaged in such serious give-and-take, they’ll make fewer mistakes and earn much more political support.

I sure don't have perfect pitch, either. One reason I can only play piano is that it's the instrument somebody else comes to the house to tune :) But I have always related well to keyboards: even as a highschooler in the days of manual typewriters, I preferred writing on a keyboard to writing by hand.

I'm not like Ray, but my relative pitch and pitch memory are top-notch. I've been correcting the guitar tuning in my brother's bands for decades.

That too, but I was talking more about guys with bad left hand mechanics who get really poor tone from their fingers. I used to work at a guitar shop, and half the guys who came in to check pickups and fretboards had perfectly functioning equipment, they were just getting lazy with the left hand.

I've got perfect pitch and can pretty much play anything that I've heard before on the first try. So if someone says "Play Sweet Caroline" (or whatever) I can belt it out even if I've never played it before.

I HATE YOU

(and hate is not strong enough)
after a few guitar lessons as a teenager I was told I was absolutely hopeless by my guitar teacher (who did not read music...)
a few years later I actually forced myself to play a little- by reading a book, after learning to read sheet music I could play the notes and working with it awhile I'd get the timing of the notes down well enough so that what I was playing was somewhat recognizable, I even took two guitar course (classical guitar) in college-

I could not play ANYTHING by ear, no matter how simple, then or now, which baffled a teacher of mine who could- after all I wasn't "tone deaf" I had no problems recognizing melodies, I just could not the nor now, listen to a melody and then pluck it it on a guitar or tap it out on a keyboard.

I could not play ANYTHING by ear, no matter how simple, then or now, which baffled a teacher of mine who could- after all I wasn't "tone deaf" I had no problems recognizing melodies, I just could not the nor now, listen to a melody and then pluck it it on a guitar or tap it out on a keyboard.

The real skill in this, IMO, is not so much being able to play the melody by ear with the right hand, but is being able to do that while also getting the chord progression with the left. And then kind of filling everything in.

Well, there's a ton of things people could be doing wrong. Most of it just stems from learning to play the guitar by picking it up and going. Its hard to explain it without seeing and showing. What I will say is that a lot of people get lazy with their left thumb and let it lie down, they overarch their left wrist, a ton of people push way to hard on the strings, and the easiest and most common mistake is they touch the string too hi on the fret. All of these things can lead to rattles or stifled sounds.

edit: Another big one is using the wrong part of the finger to push the strings. People try and get up on the very tip of the finger to avoid hitting other strings and they wind up "trapping" the string instead of "pressing" it.

I could not play ANYTHING by ear, no matter how simple, then or now, which baffled a teacher of mine who could- after all I wasn't "tone deaf" I had no problems recognizing melodies, I just could not the nor now, listen to a melody and then pluck it it on a guitar or tap it out on a keyboard.

It took me years to get to the point where I could play by ear. For people who don't have a real good sense of pitch (i.e. if you play three notes back to back I can rank them but not put them on any kind of contextual scale) it takes a lot of practice before you get to the point where can play by ear.

That too, but I was talking more about guys with bad left hand mechanics who get really poor tone from their fingers. I used to work at a guitar shop, and half the guys who came in to check pickups and fretboards had perfectly functioning equipment, they were just getting lazy with the left hand.

Many outsiders complain that they’ve had less access to senior officials in the Obama administration than any administration in decades. And outside experts say that when they do get a chance, the exchanges are not free and easy.

And who are these "experts?"
Seriously, if these are a bunch of neo-cons whining, then it's LOOOONG overdue that they've been shut out.

How on earth could his Foreign Policy be any worse than Bush's? Or even his own first term's?

People try and get up on the very tip of the finger to avoid hitting other strings and they wind up "trapping" the string instead of "pressing" it.

well you can minimize that by cutting your nails really short and developing calluses on the tips of your fingers....

I haven't played in years, I finally pulled my Fender Classical Guitar (Acoustic with nylon strings) out of my mother's house a few months ago, realized to my dismay that I'd left it in the case for years with the strings taut... not good.

I could not play ANYTHING by ear, no matter how simple, then or now, which baffled a teacher of mine who could- after all I wasn't "tone deaf" I had no problems recognizing melodies, I just could not the nor now, listen to a melody and then pluck it it on a guitar or tap it out on a keyboard.

I'm pretty much the same way. I took piano lessons for a number of years, [edit] 7 in total but not all consecutively, and I while I was always pretty good at memorizing pieces, I was lousy at sight-reading and terrible at playing anything by ear. Certainly part of that stemmed from not practicing or taking it seriously enough, but there's definitely a skill that I just don't have. I have had similar problems with foreign languages -- I'm typically very good at reading, writing and speaking, but hearing and understanding native speakers has always been very challenging.

And who are these "experts?"
Seriously, if these are a bunch of neo-cons whining, then it's LOOOONG overdue that they've been shut out

Indeed, those experts might just be some of Gelb's old fuddy-duddy buddies*, frustrated that their access and influence are faded.

But, I don't know, there might be something to the "Team of Rivals" dynamic Obama faced with Hillary and Gates, in particular, in key roles. Foreign policy might especially lend itself to the most thorough vetting of ideas, and the most respect for the law of unintended consequences. No administration ever illustrated that more than W's.

well you can minimize that by cutting your nails really short and developing calluses on the tips of your fingers....

Well, yeah, but some people can't. There's a pretty decent chunk of people out there who's fingers are shaped in such a way that a truly perpendicular angle can't be taken. These people read in books that they're supposed to be using the tips and can't ever get a good sound. Not really the "laziness" I was talking about, but Spike asked what could be wrong with a left hand, so I added it.

I haven't played in years, I finally pulled my Fender Classical Guitar (Acoustic with nylon strings) out of my mother's house a few months ago, realized to my dismay that I'd left it in the case for years with the strings taut... not good.

Also, I used to play a ton of 12 string. My prized possession is an electric Rickenbacker 660 12. I keep it at half a note down tuned and always kill tension before I put it away. I live in perpetual fear that I"m going to hurt my baby.

There's a pretty decent chunk of people out there who's fingers are shaped in such a way that a truly perpendicular angle can't be taken. These people read in books that they're supposed to be using the tips and can't ever get a good sound.

Interesting. My fingers are typically almost parallel to the fingerboard whenever I am playing single note runs. That way the fattest part is on the string and it's a lot easier to wiggle/bend a note or jump back to the triad chords. I think the only time I get close to perpendicularity is if I am really having to stretch to reach a barre chord of some kind that forces my ring and middle finger knuckles up high.

I keep it at half a note down tuned and always kill tension before I put it away.

Also interesting - I have a pretty good-sized collection of 40's and 50's instruments that have been strung to pitch nonstop for literally decades. So far so good - I think I've only had one reset ever, and it was goofy when I got it.

I shudder to think what you guys would have made of my bass playing as a teenager.

I had a bass I picked up for peanuts at a flee market that I would only occasionally "tune" (and by tune I mean, randomly fiddle with the knobs until I got bored). I also played it upside down because I'm left handed, and because it just makes sense...the low string should be below the higher strings, no?

Our band was a hit at parties, playing the same segment of the Talking Heads' Psycho Killer over and over for several hours.

The example above of students not even being able to order artwork by year even when they have the timeline in front of them is a good example. The assignment should have been for students to create the timeline themselves. I guarantee more of them would remember the information that way.

It was an extra question on an online quiz whose only purpose was to make sure they could take online quizzes without a computer problem.

I have had students create timelines in the past, but I am not sure of their utility, so I stopped doing it. The problem is that knowing the order in which artworks were made is nice, but only part of what they should know. Moreover, in most of my courses we proceed in approximate chronological order anyways (the exception are the intro surveys where we do jump around a bit at the beginning), so it's not clear that the task is much more than trivial. Much better (and easier) would be to know the periods each work belongs to and the order of the periods. And that is what I give them in the course handouts. But many students don't seem to be able to work out that if they think about art works in terms of period rather than individually, they don't have to memorize as much ("Ah, that's a High Classical Sculpture. So it must date to around 450 B.C. or a little earlier")

"Ah, that's a High Classical Sculpture. So it must date to around 450 B.C. or a little earlier"

Exactly. I play a game in the mornings, I turn on the classical station on the way to work and see if I can date the piece they're playing to within a half-century or so: if really on, I can guess the composer; if horribly off, you don't want to know. The point is not to know that this is Opus 56 by Johann Philipp So-and-So, it's to have a feel for the whole cultural history of music, As I alluded to above, I'm a musical novice, but ideally this is a game a cultured person should try to play with art, poetry, architecture I don't know what the tangible, monetizable value of such skills are, but they are a way of acknowledging the one-way communications we're getting from the past.

The funny thing is, a true minority of people are tone-deaf. Less than one in twenty (which is still not a small number, of course). But a far greater percentage of people say or think they are because the test is in singing, which is so personal it makes people just assume, or be silent.

But a far greater percentage of people say or think they are because the test is in singing, which is so personal it makes people just assume, or be silent.

I find it very difficult to work up the nerve to sing...except for some reason when it comes to karaoke of songs originally sung by a female. I can really belt out The Cardigans' Lovefool or No Doubt's Sunday Morning. I can also do the female portion of a couple B-52s songs.

EDIT: I assume it is just one of the many ways in which irony can act as a self-defence mechanism.

I'm always confused by Jim Halpert's singing of Lovefool to annoy Karen Philipelli. Who wouldn't love being serenaded with that one?

Also, I used to play a ton of 12 string. My prized possession is an electric Rickenbacker 660 12. I keep it at half a note down tuned and always kill tension before I put it away. I live in perpetual fear that I"m going to hurt my baby.

Beautiful instruments *have* to be played! If they aren't, it's like art that nobody looks at.

I can't play any instrument, or sing a lick, yet have been fascinated by my 4 year old's first foray into music. My wife got her a piano (she played) and it is pretty cool watching her enthusiastically show me what she's learning to do after every lesson. Of course a part of me thinks this piano won't be touched five years from now, at least we will have another crack at it with my 20 month old.

I played the French horn, from 4th grade through high school. While I positively love the gorgeous tone of a French horn, what a ridiculously dumb choice of an instrument to learn to play for someone not going to pursue a musical career.

I mean, the French horn was great. But who ever said, at a party, hey, man, why don't you break out your French horn?

My first and middle names are for a fellow named Sousa, as mom hoped I might somehow be granted that musical talent. I have less than zero talent there, alas.

My wife has the voice of an angel, and charisma out the door, and the looks to back it up.
She manages billionaires at Big Biz meetings, and they are putty in her hands - they just ask her when to go on stage, and what to say.

But what she won't do is so much as a karaoke singing performance in front of 20 people on a Wednesday night, anonymously.

Yet I love to do live TV, which she considers overwhelming - even though the net worth of 200 audience members whose events she manages probably exceeds about a million of my "listeners" - even when it's an NPR radio spot, lol

I do think it's cool that we all have such different skillsets, not just us but also the previous responses.

For what its worth I never did any of that. I paid attention to lectures and read the material, but the act of writing just for the sake of writing never appealed to me

I studied for my finals in law school by writing outlines. The act of reviewing all of the work and organizing it into a coherent system re-taught me the material and enabled me to remember everything. Worked damn well.

It's a strange form of OCD where I can't copy. Even if I'm transferring my own notes into a paper I find I have to change the words in the transition. Which is a bit helpful in lectures as I go through a process of "what's another way of expressing this point?" inbetween hearing and writing. When it comes to studying for exams revision was a pretty simple job of skimming through my lecture notes. I don't think I spent more than an hour or two studying for any test in my life. Of course, that is the advantage of studying history...much more papers than tests.

Is there any method to this? Do you find the reformulations come out more efficient? More precise (via e.g. superior word choice)? Or is there no rhyme nor reason to it at all?

I think it comes from boredom. Copying things out is incredibly dull, and if I try to re-word the arguments/points I feel like I'm actually doing something. It's sort of a similar dynamic to exercise. I've never been able to work out at a gym, or just go for a run. But if I can convince myself there's more going on that simple exercise I have zero problem with motivation - I'm a bit like a dog, I could chase after fly balls, or pretend I'm Doug Flutie and scramble around throwing a football for hours on end.

On a practical level I do think it's helpful. I tend to remember better when I've played a role in creating the words in my head. I think everyone has their own idiosyncratic way of expressing (and understanding) things, so I make it a bit of a habit to always try to read someone's point, then translate the same point in the terms I would express it in. It helps me understand the point better, but it also allows it to stick in my head because in using my own language I've cast it in a way that makes intuitive sense.

EDIT: as for efficiency...I think sometimes that is the case. I'm a horrible self-editor (in that I don't do it...generally once a things is written down it stays written down). So several iterations of re-writing notes helps to sneak some editing in before the actual editing.

One of my friends just posted the album cover to Wasnatch's Front to Back on facebook this morning.

Perhaps a bit racy to link to (I've got a reputation to maintain after all!), but a quick google search will give a pretty clear demonstration of how you can play a French Horn in a way the chicks will dig.

I'm not like Ray, but my relative pitch and pitch memory are top-notch.

I'm like this too. As for people who can't play guitar but don't realize it (usually its because that can't keep time or even keep track of what bar they're on) my drummer buddy called them guitarded. One of my favourite words.

As for beautiful instruments that never get played, I have a 1954 National archtop hollow body that I never play any more. It was mt first guitar, I put a want ad in the paper and this old guy (the original owner) sold it to me for $250. That was almost 20 years ago.....geez. It is electrified, and when I bought it it had a screw-on jack for the patch cord.

As a non-musician - I often find women's parts easier to sing, but I'm not sure if that's ironic distance or simple freedom from expectation or something else. Idea is that I'm less inclined to poorly emulate what a better singer might do and instead start a little lower than I otherwise might, which gives me more room to move up as needed.

DeSmog Blog’s Steve Horn Thursday drew attention to an interesting detail in the Arkansas ExxonMobil oil spill story. He notes, “The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had a ‘no fly zone’ in place in Mayflower, Arkansas since April 1 at 2:12 PM and will be in place ‘until further notice,’ according to the FAA website and it’s being overseen by ExxonMobil itself.”

This means that any journalists or observers wishing to survey the tar sands disaster and clean up efforts must as the Pegasus pipeline owner for permission. Via Horn:

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette revealed that the FAA site noted earlier today that “only relief aircraft operations under direction of Tom Suhrhoff” were allowed within the designated no fly zone.

Suhrhoff is not an FAA employee: he works for ExxonMobil as an “Aviation Advisor“ and formerly worked as a U.S. Army pilot for 24 years, according to his LinkedIn page.